GRASS cutting in 20 churchyards across North-West Durham has not been carried out for more than a year, as a row over safety rages.

Derwentside District Council, which is responsible for maintaining the cemeteries, is in dispute with the Bishop of Durham's office over dangerous headstones.

The council has identified hundreds that are in a dangerous state and wants to lay them down to make them safe.

But the bishop's office will not grant permission to lay the stones flat, unless the council promises to restore them to their former glory in the future - and agrees to maintain them forever.

Derwentside District Council said this will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and has refused.

The church has threatened legal action if any gravestones are moved without permission, so the council has withdrawn its workers.

Peter Reynolds, head of environmental services at Derwentside District Council, said: "We started a programme of testing headstones and laying flat the dangerous ones.

"We got a response from the advisory committee saying this was illegal. Since then, we have not been able to get anybody in to cut the grass."

He said the council will cut out pathways so that people can reach churchyard war memorials on Remembrance Sunday next month.

One of those affected is St Andrew's Church in Stanley, where 54 men and boys are buried in unmarked trenches.

They were among 168 miners killed in an explosion at the Burns Pit in February 1909, one of the region's worst ever mining disasters.

The Advertiser and Northern Echo raised £2,800 during their appeal for a memorial stone for the unmarked trenches.

Local historian Bob Drake said: "The grass is five feet high. It is absolutely disgraceful.

"We have our sights set on putting a memorial there and we cannot take people in when it is like this. You cannot even see where the graves are any more."

Chester-le-Street Council is facing £65,000 to repair 300 unsafe gravestones and Durham City has already earmarked around £10,000 a year for a rolling programme of repairs and maintenance.

Bill Heslop, secretary of the bishop's diocesan advisory committee, said: "Most councils are taking a fairly pragmatic approach and dealing with this piecemeal.

"Derwentside has taken fright and cannot see that there are easy ways through the problem."